Today I had the great opportunity to join a 1 on 1 photography workshop with Duc. We spent 4 hours within a radius of just a few hundred meters and I learned so much! Here is a quick review of the workshop including a few of the pictures I was lucky enough to shoot.

We started off at 5.15 heading for Long Bien Bridge. With a tripod we wanted to catch the passing trains. It was a great experience to be able to take pics with an exposure time of 10 seconds plus since usually I do not carry a tripod with me. Below is an image without a train but with the bridge and the light of the cars that were passing by.

Long Bien Bridge at 6.00 in the morning

Next stop was the wholesale market just nearby. We still used the tripod and I was able to capture all the energy and the atmosphere with the following shot:

Long Bien Market – what a crazy atmosphere!

Then Duc showed me a great corner spot and taught me how to focus the camera using the rule of thirds on a certain point and wait for an interesting object to appear. Luckily I caught some typical Vietnamese women including the shot below.

Trying not to position the subject too much in the center…

Then came probably the biggest lesson for me: angle and perspective! I took an image of a women which Duc thought was quite boring as I was looking down on her. By looking down, I also made her small. On exactly the same spot 20 seconds later we then took a “hero shot”, actually shooting up from below. Note how different an atmosphere this creates!

Standard picture looking down on herA “hero shot” looking up from below

It was really fun to interact with the people in the market since I was the only foreigner there and they seemed to enjoy talking to me in Vietnamese… 🙂

Selecting how you frame your image is really important and makes a big difference. Look at the two images below of dragon fruits for example. Notice how the second image is just a lot more powerful because you do not know where the heap of fruit ends…

Image 1: Ok, but just a standard shot

Image 2: So much better because you do not know where it ends! 🙂

The last picture I want to show here is one which we took in an area of Hanoi where people live literally just next to the railway tracks.

One thought on “4 Hour Street Photography in Hanoi – Workshop with Duc”

I always enjoy seeing your photos. The header shot of the woman’s hat with the green and orange fruit beneath is amazing. I’m heading to Vietnam (DaNang, Hoi An, and Hanoi) in two weeks. Your post made me excited.